Everyone agrees that we currently suffer from a housing shortage, and that the thousands of new residences - under construction or proposed to be so - will resolve this thorny issue. Someday, our victims of the great fires and those of inflated housing costs, can expect welcome relief.
While this rosy picture may seem indisputable, the subtle fact that the magnitude of the proposed projects far exceeds that of the victims ought to raise a suspicion of a broader, covert agenda. In fact, there are two additional groups being surreptitiously included in the crisis, exploiting its urgency to garner unwarranted opportunity. Each group resides outside our area; one that seeks to move here whenever housing becomes available, and the other not so inclined, yet will be enticed to do so in the future. These groups are the focus of developers - often outsiders themselves - seeking fat profit by paving over our unspoiled landscape with vast tracts of residential mediocrity that callously disregards the integrity, not only of the desperate buyer, but that of our community as well. The notion, then, of "housing shortage", with greed behind the need, eventually becomes moot.
This is our "American way"; originating from our ancient religious beliefs, honoring a deity in our own image, exhorting us to "go forth"(develop new lands), to "multiply"(populate), and to "conquer the earth"(defy nature). later, we added our contrived, "Ponzi-like" economic system asserting that growth to be "mandatory, inevitable, and infinite". Combined, such reasoning - despite its complete absurdity - has become the basic model for our collective business endeavor.
Meanwhile, the resulting specter of global warming has now raised its ugly head and can no longer be ignored. With still lots to do, we have been impressive in our rally to this issue, developing sophisticated strategy that promises to "make the difference" and doing so without significant sacrifice to our popular lifestyle.
Unfortunately, this comfy scenario is too good to be true. While global warming is extremely serious and demands immediate attention, the deeper "mother" of our environmental ills, especially when combined with our misguided, anti-nature attitudes - is population growth. This pervasive force, responding to the demands of every new individual (224,000 / day) for their "place in the sun", ravenously gorges itself on dwindling resources, hurtles us towards a "Brave New World" of escalating desperation, as we trade away our quantity and our quality, for the mindless sake of unbridled procreation.
In principle, this can be easily resolved; First, we must transform our attitudes to those of respect, of humility, even subservience towards - and full sustainability with - the magnificent process of nature; Then, we must not only end population growth, but, of necessity, reduce our numbers to a perfect compatibility with our environment. In actual practice, however, this solution will make for a tumultuous transition; The loss of growth-based jobs and wealth will entail excruciating pain, bringing disorder, chaos, and upheaval to most of our cherished institutions. It will demand a complete overhaul of most of our values, in ways that many will find devastating, even lethal. Small wonder our perpetual, scandalously irresponsible, ostrich-like denial towards any open discussion of this ominous reality.
The final dilemma - above and beyond the others - lies in the impossible conflict between the very short amount of time we have remaining in order to effectively take action, and the excessive amount of time needed to achieve agreement and cooperation between the myriad diverse, entrenched cultures throughout the world. A truly staggering challenge that sees little in the way of possibility.
The issues presented herein are certainly controversial, even shocking; they will trigger reactions of disbelief and dismissal by some. They all, however follow a common sense that is difficult to realistically refute. We can no longer afford the time-consuming luxuries of our traditional, overly optimistic euphoria of contrived beliefs that we have historically accessed whenever confronted with "unpleasantness". Nature - too long dismissed with contemptuous indifference - is preparing to "bat last", and its ruthless pragmatism will bring about the least appealing consequence of them all.